1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an improvement of a network printing system in which a printer receives a print job from a host computer on a network and prints.
The present application is based on Japanese Patent Application No. Hei. 10-204954, which is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a conventional type network printing system, a print job is unilaterally sent to a printer from a host computer or a print server, the printer passively receives it and sequentially processes it.
A printer always only passively prints when it receives a print job from a host computer or a print server and cannot spontaneously print. As a printer does not start another job until one job is finished when the printer starts the one job, the termination of the whole printout is delayed when a job the transfer rate in a network of which is slow is once started.
Therefore, the object of the present invention is to enable the efficient processing of print jobs from a host computers.
Another object of the present invention is to enable a printer to make a request to a host computer for a print job and spontaneously print.
Further another object of the present invention is to enable a printer to receive plural print jobs and simultaneously process each job.
A printing system according to the present invention is provided with one or plural host computers for generating the job data of a print job and a printer for receiving job data from the one or plural host computers and printing, and the printer is provided with a job request section for making a request to one or plural host computers for job data and a printing section for receiving job data sent from the one or plural host computers in response to the request from the job request section and printing. Hereby, the printer can judge which job is given priority and efficiently process print jobs from plural host computers.
In embodiments of the present invention, each host computer informs a print server of the location of job data when a print job is generated, the print server temporarily stores the informed location of job data and informs a printer of the location. Or each host computer directly sends the location data of a job to a printer. A printer makes a request to all host computers which the received location data of jobs shows for attribute data related to job data such as the capacity of job data so as to execute the jobs. The printer demands job data related to attribute data sent earliest in response to the request from the host computer having the job data.
In a preferred embodiment, a printer is provided with plural output bins, receives job data of the number up to the number of output bins, allocates the above job data to each output bin, executes plural job processing in parallel and outputs the result of printing generated in the job processing every print job to the allocated output bin. Hereby, as the following job can be efficiently printed in parallel with another job even if a job the transfer rate in a network of which is slow is included in print jobs, time required for the whole printout can be greatly reduced.
A computer can typically function as a print server and a host and a computer program for the function can be installed or loaded in a computer via various media such as a disk storage, a semiconductor memory and a communication network.
Features and advantages of the invention will be evident from the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments described in conjunction with the attached drawings.